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Many are puzzled by the widespread support in European democracies of Palestinian groups and Arab states that promote genocidal anti-Semitism. After all, Palestinian and broader Arab anti-Semitism draws heavily, in its anti-Jewish propaganda, on Nazi models, and Western Europe and the European Union are supposed to be opposed to everything touching on Nazism and its genocidal policies.

Hamas’s charter quotes a Hadith in which Allah declares that the Day of Judgement will not come until the Jews are all killed and even the stones and trees will assist in murdering them. The charter adds that Hamas “aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take.” Hamas employs its media, mosques and schools to convey the same message. Its schools and children’s television programming teach their young audience the necessity of killing Jews.

Nevertheless, in many quarters of the European mainstream, the Hamas rulers of Gaza are besieged heroes and Israel and “the Jews” are the villains.

Despite recent statements to the contrary by Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, the Palestinian Authority hardly lags behind its Islamist rivals in peddling genocidal Jew-hatred. PA media depict Jews as a cancer that must be excised and, like Hamas, insist it is a religious duty to do so. PA indoctrination includes delineations of the nature of Jews that entail virtually every hoary anti-Semitic caricature. PA leaders use their vehicles of incitement to instill in Palestinians not only commitment to annihilating Israel but also dedication to extirpating the Jews.

For example, a recent official Palestinian Authority Friday sermon, broadcast on PA TV and translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), had the preacher declaring: “The Jews are the enemies of Allah and His messenger… the enemies of humanity in general… Our mutual enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith more than an issue pertaining to occupation and land… The prophet Muhammad said: ‘You will fight the Jews, and you will kill them…’”

Yet there is virtually universal clamor in Europe for Israeli concessions to the PA, universal impatience with any invoking by Israel of a need to be able to defend itself, and universal silence on the PA’s genocidal objectives.

In the wider Arab world, even in countries allied to the West, the same Nazi-like message is incessantly promoted. A recurrent feature of Saudi government television is of clerics or other authority figures demonizing Jews, often with the speaker having children present to whom they are imparting their Jew-hating wisdom.

Even in countries with which Israel is officially at peace, such as Egypt, variations on the same theme are prominent in government-controlled media. Egyptian television and government newspapers have, for example, featured clerical and academic authorities confirming that Jews do indeed use the blood of non-Jews in their recipes for Passover matzoh.

Again, the primary European response to all this is silence, together with castigation of Israel and its Jewish supporters for not being more accommodating of Arab demands.

But puzzlement over this reality is misplaced. The truth is that, during the Nazi era as today, to the extent that the peoples of Europe’s democracies regarded the Jews as an inconvenience, they were not only indifferent to the genocidal intent directed at them but in various ways abetted it.
Two democracies on the Continent remained unoccupied by Hitler.

Switzerland handed over an estimated 30,000 Jews to the Nazi death machine. The victims were people who had either found their way to Switzerland’s borders and were turned away or had crossed into Switzerland but were rounded up and pushed back into Nazi-occupied territory, often transferred directly to German authorities. Swiss citizens who sought to shelter Jews were subject to prosecution and imprisonment. Switzerland also aided the Nazis financially, not least in receiving and managing resources stolen from Holocaust victims.

Sweden, the other unoccupied democracy, had a mixed history during the Nazi era. In the latter part of the war, it took in Jews fleeing Denmark and Norway. But it was essentially closed to Jews seeking refuge in the preceding years, and throughout the war it provided extensive industrial and financial support to Hitler’s regime. Aftenbladet, Sweden’s largest newspaper and recently the notorious inventor and purveyor of an anti-Jewish blood libel claiming that Israeli forces killed Palestinians to harvest their organs for transplants, was staunchly pro-Nazi through the Hitler years.

As to the United Kingdom, its wartime record is illustrated by a spring, 1943, Foreign Office memorandum to the State Department opposing efforts to rescue Europe’s Jews:

“There is a possibility that the Germans and their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination [of the Jews] to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.”

Other Foreign Office memos conveyed the same message, referring repeatedly to, in the words of one, “the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued.”

In fact, Great Britain’s abetting the Nazi genocide went far beyond merely discouraging rescue efforts by others and was directly linked to British policies regarding the Jewish presence in what was then Mandate Palestine. Those policies, and British behavior before as well as during the war, foreshadow current British attitudes towards Israel.

In the context of the post-World War I reallocation of some German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and czarist Russian territories, nations were created for previously subjugated peoples. Europe saw the birth, for example, of a new Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland, together with other states. In the Middle East, France was granted a mandate by the League of Nations for establishment of a new Arab nation, Syria, and Britain was, of course, given mandates for creation of another Arab state in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and for establishment of a Jewish national home in what was labeled the “Palestine Mandate.”

The League of Nations delineated among Britain’s Mandate responsibilities in Palestine promoting “close settlement of the land” by Jews. But local British authorities, as well as many in London officialdom, repeatedly balked at carrying out Britain’s Mandate obligations to the Jews, moved both by anti-Jewish bias and by perceptions of imperial pragmatism. With regard to the latter, the British generally viewed the Arabs of the region as more pliant to British hegemony than the Jews.

Britain’s betrayal of the Jews included the use of agents provocateurs to encourage Arab attacks on the Jews, as well as standing by while Jews were slaughtered, after which British officials would claim that carrying out commitments to the Jews was impossible because there was violent Arab resistance which could not be controlled. It included giving public lands to Arabs while withholding such lands from Jews, in direct violation of Mandate stipulations. It entailed turning a blind eye to large-scale Arab migration into the Mandate territory, drawn mainly by Jewish-driven economic growth, while repeatedly creating obstructions to Jewish immigration. It also entailed illegally transferring a substantial portion of the Golan Heights, part of Mandate Palestine, to French control in 1923 in exchange for French acquiescence to British steps elsewhere in the Middle East. (Article 5 of the League of Nations Mandate states: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.”)

(The British also closed to Jews about 77% of Mandate territory, all the land east of the Jordan River. This was done after approval of the mandate for creation of the Jewish national home by the victorious World War I allies at San Remo in 1920, but before League of Nations adoption of the Mandate in 1922.)

The League of Nations Permanent Mandate Commission repeatedly censured Britain for betrayals of its Mandate obligations to the Jews, and at times Britain would reverse some anti-Jewish measure, only to re-institute it at a later date.

With the rise of Nazism and Nazi inroads in winning Arab support and stoking anti-British sentiment in the Arab world, the British – if somewhat disabused of their convictions of Arab affection for them – were now eager to appease Arab opinion and so had another motive for reneging on their Mandate commitments.

Shortly before the start of World War II, despite the desperate plight of Europe’s Jews, and despite yet another censure by the Permanent Mandate Commission, Britain implemented a sharp curtailment of Jewish immigration to Palestine with a view to ending Jewish entry entirely in five years and allowing Palestine to become one more Arab state, with an ongoing British presence.

The subsequent Nazi genocide was viewed by many in the Foreign Office as a way of permanently assuring realization of Britain’s objectives in Palestine. If no Jews survived in Nazi-controlled territories, there would be little remaining rationale for creation of the Jewish national home.

Consistent with this objective, Britain went to great lengths to prevent Jews from escaping Europe. Illustrative is the story of the Struma, one of many ships that carried Jews who had boarded overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels in the Rumanian Black Sea port of Constanta in doomed efforts at escape. The Struma, with 761 Jews aboard,limped into Istanbul harbor on December 15, 1941, its engine malfunctioning and a leak in its hull. The Turkish authorities said it would allow the passengers to disembark if Britain would grant them entry to the Mandate territory. Britain refused. In the course of negotiations that dragged on for weeks, Britain was asked to admit at least the children aboard. At one point it appeared that permission would be given for some seventy of the children, but Britain never officially authorized this. Its stance remained one of refusal. After some two months, the Turkish government gave up on any British change of heart and had the ship tugged into open water. It sank the next day with one survivor.

Then as now, there were those in Britain who strongly objected to anti-Jewish strains in national opinion and national policy. In particular, there were those who led public campaigns aimed at changing policy and promoting rescue of European Jews. Especially notable among these voices were the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and the leader of Britain’s Catholics, Arthur Cardinal Hinsley. But there was no change in policy.

Those in the Foreign Office who initiated and carried out anti-Jewish policies were not, of course, pro-Nazi, nor were most of their sympathizers among the British public. But they had their biases, and their views of Britain’s interests in the Middle East, and in these lights the Jews were expendable.

Anthony Eden was a leading Conservative Party opponent of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement before the war, but as wartime foreign minister he was a key architect and enforcer of British opposition to rescuing Jews from the Nazi genocide. Eden’s personal secretary wrote of him in 1943: “A.E. is immovable on the subject of Palestine. He loves Arabs and hates Jews.”

British policy after the war remained directed at thwarting establishment of the Jewish national home. When, in November, 1947, the United Nations voted for partition of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan into a Jewish state and an Arab state, Britain aided attacks on Jewish enclaves by irregular Arab forces entering the Mandate from surrounding nations. When Israel declared its independence the following spring, Britain supported the ensuing invasion by Arab armies.

The most effective of those armies was that of Transjordan (the Arab entity created by Britain in the Mandate territories east of the Jordan that had been closed to Jews). Its Arab Legion, commanded by a British general and staffed by a number of senior British officers, conquered what became known as the West Bank, as well as eastern parts of Jerusalem including the Old City. The Legion killed or expelled every Jew living in the areas it seized. Transjordan subsequently annexed the conquered areas, an act endorsed by only two of the world’s nations: Britain and Pakistan.

Attitudes in Britain today – among both leaders and much of the general public – towards Israel and the Jews closely resemble the biases of the past, most notably of the 1940’s. Perhaps this is hardly surprising, given that the importance on the world stage of Arab oil, and Arab political and economic clout, has, of course, only grown in the past six decades.

Exemplifying such attitudes is Nick Clegg, head of the Liberal Democrats and now deputy prime minister. Not long ago Clegg questioned the concept of a “Jewish state” and Israel’s insistence – consistent with the 1947 UN partition plan – that it be recognized as such by its neighbors. Clegg has expressed no similar misgivings about the world’s several dozen officially Muslim states.

Now, too, as in the 1940’s, there are voices in Britain protesting the demonization of Israel, the support given its enemies and the silence regarding those enemies’ genocidal agenda that are so prevalent in British media, academia, unions and other circles. But now as then, those protesting voices are of very limited impact.

Two hundred years ago, Lord Byron, in his Hebrew Melodies, wrote, “The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,/ Mankind their Country – Israel but the grave!” For Byron, the lines were a reproach to a bigoted world. For many in Britain today, they are an enthusiastically embraced objective.

While no other nation had Britain’s direct involvement with Israel’s modern rebirth, Britain’s record on Jewish matters in the 1940’s has its parallels, as noted, in other European democracies.

That “decent” Britons and other Europeans can today embrace Israel’s enemies and be indifferent to their Nazi-like genocidal incitement and aspirations is not an anomaly but all too familiar. We’ve seen it before.

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.

Here again we see that real Nazis hate Israel, as they have always hated Jews. It is only in the sick and libelous fantasies and fabrications of CAIR's Honest Ibe Hooper, Charles Johnson and the like that anti-jihadists, who in fact recognize that Israel is on the front line of the global jihad, align with neo-Nazis.

BERLIN - "Stop cooperation with the state of Jewish scoundrels", "Don't give in to the thriving Holocaust industry." These statements were not said in the Tehran parliament, but in the German city of Dresden, during a parliament meeting in the state of Saxony.

Leader of the extreme right National Democratic Party (NPD) Holger Apfel stirred up a storm in the parliament on Thursday when he carried a speech titled "no to cooperation with scoundrel countries - and end cooperation between Saxony and Israel."

Most parliament members urged Apfel to change the title, fearing it would damage Saxony's image - but to no avail. Apfel, a former neo-Nazi, stepped up to the podium and carried out his hate speech, while being booed by other parliament members.

Even after his time was up, Apfel refused to step down from the stage and continued to denounce the "Jewish terror state." His speech was finally stopped after the chairman turned off his microphone and instructed ushers to escort Apfel out of the hall....

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

It is only in the sick and libelous fantasies and fabrications of CAIR's Honest Ibe Hooper, Charles Johnson and the like that anti-jihadists, who in fact recognize that Israel is on the front line of the global jihad, align with neo-Nazis.

(emphasis mine)

While this is a good article by Robert Spencer, there really is no need for a cheap swipe at Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs--clearly, a person who time and time again has shown himself to be a friend of Israel.

My suggestion to Robert Spencer: we have more than enough real enemies. Lay off Charles Johnson.

__________________ “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”--George Bush

While this is a good article by Robert Spencer, there really is no need for a cheap swipe at Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs--clearly, a person who time and time again has shown himself to be a friend of Israel.

My suggestion to Robert Spencer: we have more than enough real enemies. Lay off Charles Johnson.

In my opinion Not as consistently and not as much as Robert Spencer. I make this statement from reading Little Green Footballs for years. But everyone has their own opinion. Charles Johnson attacks other friends of Israel such as Pamela Geller in articles like (Pamela Geller Makes More Fascist Friends) that have helped organize and lead pro-Israel rallies and events in the USA. Where was Charles Johnson in these rallies and events? I agree that Johnson has done some good and I have submitted material to him. It is that he attacks anyone that does not agree with his political views and that includes those that support Israel often inflating the supposed connections. I wonder if others could do the same to him if they had has same character? There are ways to disagree with others without using character assignation is all I am saying. As the old say goes “he who lives in a glass house should be careful about throwing rocks.”

We are all free here to like or dislike who we choose and here I am only stating my personal opinion.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Here is a snippet of a friend of mines facebook page Its not hard to see me this is just the tip of the Iceberg of anti Semitism in Ireland today, Ive decided to leave names and pictures up because Im proud of who Iam and the people who said these things should be ashamed its also all open content and reported as racisim on fb.

(video is in Dutch, but you will get the idea. It’s also encoded in nasty Microsoft Silverlight – download it here if you don’t see the video).
Reports of increased anti-Semitism and a secret video showing Jews harassed on the street in Amsterdam have prompted Dutch authorities to consider using “decoy Jews” — undercover officers wearing yarmulkes — to combat hate crimes.

No decision has yet been made to use the tactic. But the country’s justice minister and Amsterdam’s acting mayor both say they are considering it. And advocacy groups say intimidation has become a serious issue for Jews in the Netherlands.

“For ten years now Jews who are recognizable as such from their clothing can’t walk peacefully on the street,” the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, a Jewish activist group, said in a statement Friday. “The perpetrators of this kind of incident almost always get away unpunished.”

The issue was given new impetus with the airing on television last week of a hidden-camera video produced by Joodse Omroep, or Jewish Broadcaster — a small television company that gets an allotted amount of airtime each week on public TV stations.

For the video, two youths and a Rabbi wearing yarmulkes went walking in a primarily Moroccan neighborhood in Amsterdam. The footage showed them being subjected to a range of ill-treatment, from dirty looks to insults — and even, from one man, a Nazi salute.

Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said Thursday that decoys are sometimes used to lure hard-to-catch criminals, like rapists, and could have some use in combating hate crimes against homosexuals and Jews.
In response to questions from parliament, Hirsch Ballin said he would put together a program devoting more resources to investigating such incidents, as well as to more education in schools and a quicker legal process for discrimination-linked cases.

Recent press reports have claimed that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Netherlands due to increasing friction with the country’s Muslim minority, which now makes up 6 percent of the population.

But Hirsch Ballin told parliament — in a debate prompted by the video — that “anti-Semitism is not on the rise,” citing government statistics from the first months of 2010.

“The number of incidents rises and falls, and is connected to tensions in the Middle East,” he said.

The number of anti-Semitic discrimination cases in Amsterdam did rise in 2009 from the previous year, according to the country’s anti-discrimination bureau, from 17 to 41. Discrimination cases on the basis of skin color or country of origin rose from 232 to 336 in the same period.
Amsterdam’s acting mayor, Lodewijk Asscher, has also said he would consider the idea of using decoy Jews and other “unorthodox methods” to combat racism and homophobia. However, his spokeswoman, Tessel Schouten, said the city doesn’t yet have specific plans to do so.

Hirsch Ballin’s spokesman, Wim van der Weegen, said that other measures, such as increased camera surveillance on some streets, might be a more effective way of registering incidents.

But Van der Weegen said the justice minister believed using decoy Jews would be within the boundaries of the law.

“It would be impossible to say that wearing a yarmulke amounts to entrapment,” he said.

Proof positive of the hatred of Jews that is instilled into every Muslim in the Qur’an and ahadith. The double standard of the Islamists and their liberal enablers, caught on camera. If these were indigenous European kids exhibiting equivalent behaviour toward Muslims, the uproar from the political élite would be incessant: ‘Islamophobia!’, ‘Racism!’, ‘Intolerance!’, ‘Hate Speech!’ – you get the idea.
This is no isolated incident, or ‘just high spirited kids’ – it is happening all over Europe – from Paris to Amsterdam, Stockholm to Copenhagen, Berlin to London. Jewish Districts in proximity to recent Muslim immigrant communities are emptying, with their occupants seeking more tolerant cities or countries’ or making Aliyah to Israel.

The political leaders of Europe, the enablers of mass Islamic immigration and the promoters and apologists of Islam have unleashed a wave of hatred over our continent, reminiscent of the days leading up to the 1930s Pogroms in Germany and Austria.
They should to hang their heads in shame at what they have wrought.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Only this time the attacker was not a Nazi, but a Muslim. "Israelis, 22 and 18, attacked in Berlin," by Benjamin Weinthal in the Jerusalem Post, June 28:

A Berlin police spokesman told the Jerusalem Post on Monday that two young Israelis were violently attacked in a Berlin disco because of their nationality. The spokesman said the attack prompted the police to issue a statement terming the attack as "anti-Semitic."
According to statements from two male Israelis aged 18 and 22, a Palestinian man was responsible for the assault. He asked the 22-year-old Israeli about his nationality, who replied that he is a citizen of Israel.

The Palestinian perpetrator choked the 22-year-old and punched him in the face. A Berlin police statement said that as the 18-year-old Israeli rushed to help his friend he was also struck by the Palestinian.

The assault took place in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, a location popular among young Germans and Israelis for its lively bar and club culture.

The Palestinian fled the disco and tossed a beer glass at the 18-year-old Israeli. The police spokesman told the Post that the authorities are searching for the alleged assailant. In a bizarre twist, the disco's 43-year-old bouncer used pepper spray against the two Israelis,who eventually fled to their hotel and notified the police about the assault. The injured Israelis received treatment in a hospital....

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

European Jewry is in its worst condition since the end of World War II. This bleak evaluation was delivered by European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor on Tuesday.

"Jews are afraid to walk the streets in Europe with Jewish signs," Kantor said. "Synagogues, Jewish schools and kindergartens require barbed-wire fences and security, and Jewish men, women and children are beaten up in broad daylight."

EJP (European Jewish Press) reports that Kantor was speaking at a lunch meeting in Brussels, organized in honor of Belgium’s ascendance to the presidency of the European Union. The participants were members of the European Parliament from Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands (Holland) and Luxembourg), as well as representatives of the Jewish communities of those countries.

Malmo, For Example"Most worryingly," he added, "Jews are being forced out of many European cities, like Malmo, because of the atmosphere of hostility and violence." Malmo, on the southern tip of Sweden, is the country's third largest city, with 290,000 people. It has the highest proportion of non-Scandinavian natives of any Swedish city; the largest group of immigrants is from Iraq.
Earlier this year, the Sunday Telegraph reported that increasing numbers of Jews were leaving Malmo for Israel and England because of a jump in anti-Semitic violence by both Muslim extremists and neo-Nazis.

Where are European Leaders?Kantor asked for support from European leaders: "I would like European politicians to state loud and clear," he said, "that there is no justification or understanding whatsoever for the attacks on Jews or Jewish institutions in Europe."

He rejected the claim uttered by Malmo Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, and many others, that the attacks on Jews are simply a byproduct of the Middle East violence, especially Israel's counter-terror attack on Gaza 18 months ago. "This line of reasoning is illegitimate as well as dishonest," Kantor said. "There are tens of conflicts raging in the world, where hundreds of thousands of people are losing their lives. Has anyone heard of a single other act of violence in Europe that is justified because of a foreign conflict?"

Three months ago, at a conference organized by the European Jewish Congress, under the patronage of the president of the European Parliament, Kantor said that in January 2009, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in France, Germany and Britain than in all of 2008. "Europe did not demonstrate any significant reaction to this," he said.

In addition to legislating stronger laws against incitement, Kantor said that Europe should also make better efforts to pressure Hamas to release captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit, who will be 24 in August, has received no neutral visitors and been held captive by Hamas-affiliated terrorists for just over four years.

The Methodist Church of Britain voted on Wednesday to boycott Israeli-produced goods and services from the West Bank because of Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”

“A majority of governments recognize the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegitimate under international law,” the church body said at its annual conference in Portsmouth.

The church body will now encourage Methodists across the UK to follow suit.

The motion stated that the boycott of goods “from illegal Israeli settlements” was in response to a call by the World Council of Churches – which advocates divestment from Israel – and by Palestinian civil society and “a growing number of Jewish organizations in Israel and worldwide.”

“The Methodist Conference notes the call of the World Council of Churches in 2009 for an international boycott of settlement produce and services and the support given for such a boycott by Christian leaders in Palestine in the Kairos document, Palestinian civil society and a growing number of Jewish organizations both inside Israel and worldwide and calls on the Methodist people to support and engage with this boycott of Israeli goods emanating from illegal settlements,” the church said.

Last year, the Methodist Church set up a working group to “work for an end to the Occupation, an end to the blockade of Gaza, adherence to international law by all sides and a just peace for all in the region.”

The resulting 54-page report produced by the church body, titled “Justice for Palestine and Israel,” met with a fierce condemnation by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Council of Christians and Jews and British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

In a statement released after Wednesday’s vote, the church body said the decision, which carried unanimously, had the goal of ending “the existing injustice.”

“This decision has not been taken lightly, but after months of research, careful consideration and finally, today’s debate at the conference,” said Christine Elliott, secretary for external relationships. “The goal of the boycott is to put an end to the existing injustice. It reflects the challenge that settlements present to a lasting peace in the region.”

Jewish community leadership organizations reacted with dismay. In a joint statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council said it was, “This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy.

“The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report’s authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction,” the statement said.

David Gifford, the chief executive of the Council of Christians and Jews, said he was disappointed that the Israeli narrative was not heard during the debate.

“I was very disappointed at the emotive nature of the debate which again did not hear fairly also the pain and cry of the Israeli,” Gifford said. “It was right to hear the pain of the Palestinian but in the end the vote of the Methodist Conference was to boycott goods and services that originate from the West Bank. We shall have to see how this will affect future relationships of the Methodist Church with other churches, the CCJ [Council of Christians and Jews] and with the British Jewish community.”

The Board of Deputies said the conference should “hang its head in shame.”

“This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations. Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.”

Anti-Zionist and anti-Israel activists who support a blanket boycott of Israel were the main sources of the document. They included Israeli-born academics Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim; Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions; Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer; and Beirut-based journalist Robert Fisk.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Dutch Chief Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs’ family has lived in Holland for generations. As a little boy, he recalls being almost embarrassed to be the only one of his friends to have both grandparents, a rare miracle indeed since 90 percent of Dutch Jewry was murdered by the Nazis.

“This horrifying statistic” he told an Israel National News’ interviewer, “was achieved with the full cooperation of the Dutch police who went from house to house to round up the Jews for the Nazi death machine.

“And last week”, he continued, “when I left my home located opposite a kindergarten, a four year old child pointed at me and yelled ‘Jew, Jew;”
Recently, when the rabbi presided at a memorial for Holocaust victims, Dutch youths yelled “Heil Hitler” during his speech. "Punshing them won't keep them from doing it again," he asserts.

INN conducted a phone interview with Rabbi Jacobs on Thursday night, after he declared that the Dutch police force’s plan to impersonate Jews in order to catch perpetrators of anti Semitic acts was punitive but not preventive. He posited that only education could prevent the growing evidence that anti-Semitism is on the rise once again in Holland.

The Rabbi, whose jurisdiction as a chief rabbi includes 11 of the 12 Dutch Provinces and who serves also as a senior member of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE), told INN that he was approached by the mayor-elect of Amsterdam to discuss his ideas on how combat the situation. His suggestions will appear in the Dutch Jewish Magazine, the NIW, as well.

INN: “What can you tell us about the Jews of Holland before the war?”

R. Jacobs : “Holland once had Jews in every town and city, fully integrated into Dutch society, mostly observant and with full communal services in each place in which they lived. Jews felt very Dutch, but there were few mixed marriages, in comparison with Dutch Jewry today. In fact, a 600-year-old mikve (ritual bath) was just discovered in southern Holland. Jews are part of Holland’s history.

INN: “And today?”

R. Jacobs: “The war changed all that with Dutch Jews believing until it was too late that what happened to German Jews could never happen to them. The Nazis began by forming a Judenrat and continued on step by step while the Jews were often unware to their approaching fate, trusting in their integration and loyalty to Holland.

Today there are 40,000 Jews in Holland by a generous estimate, and most don’t live in organized communities. There are three kosher bakeries and one kosher butcher shop in the entire country. Very few Dutch Jews are Orthodox as those towns were decimated and a large percentage of survivors moved to Israel. Those who remained have less interest in Judaism, although there is a traditional ‘cheder’ school and a regular Jewish school.”

R. Jacobs: “Let me tell you two stories that will answer your question.

During vacation time, I supervise the kashrut (kosher food) at a Golden Tulip Hotel located in the country at Beekbergen. The guests always want to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I tell them that I have never been there myself because that one example is the exception. It encourages the belief in the fairy tale that the Dutch hid Jews from the Nazis.

I tell them to go to the building that housed the Jewish Theater instead. That is the place to which the Dutch helped round up the Jews so they could be sent to Westerbork, the infamous transit camp where they were kept before continuing on to the death camps. (Picture at left: Rabbi Jacobs reads names of 102,000 Dutch victims of Holocaust.)

INN: “And the second story?”

R. Jacobs: “One day, the Queen of Holland was to attend a memorial service and I asked the venerable Rabbi Vorst, the former rabbi of Amsterdam, to honor us with the Kaddish prayer. It seemed more fitting that it should be said by a survivor, although my parents, who married after the war, also suffered much during that period.

My father was hidden in Amsterdam, where those who hid him took the food vouchers he got from the partisans he had joined and starved him until he made his way back to the partisans and told them. It took him a half year to get his home back from the Dutch gentiles who had taken it over. My mother, who was blond and looked Dutch, was hidden in northern Holland by a righteous gentile family who falsified her papers.

Rabbi Vorst agreed although it was hard for him, but he turned white as a sheet and almost fainted when he saw that the honor guards at the ceremony were wearing the same uniforms as the military police who had kept him imprisoned in Westerbork during the war. The head of the Military Police apologized for his unit’s behavior during the Holocaust even though he was born after the war.“

INN: “What is happening today?”

R. Jacobs: “There has as yet been no violence, but anti-Semitic behavior is becoming prevalent. On the way to synagogue during the week, youngsters will yell “Jew” at you. However, it should not be exaggerated. Many of the Dutch are upset by it. When paint was thrown at the door of a synagogue, we were deluged with flowers, fruit baskets and offers to pay for the restoration.

The difference is that during WWII, the government was anti-Semitic, and today the opposite is the case. The police and government are absolutely on our side.”

INN: “How can that help? Do you really think you can eradicate anti-Semitism through education?

R. Jacobs: “Not at all. Gentiles find many excuses for anti-Semitism, that Jews are richer, separate, brilliant, etc. etc. None of them are valid, but you can’t change Jew hatred by reason and explanations.

Twenty years ago we founded the Jad Achat (Working Together) organization to combat anti Semitism. Government representatives came to see us and actually asked if we had managed to eradicate anti-Semitism. They asked that we record what we did and what results were achieved. It was almost laughable.”

However, you can demand behavioral standards and I think the government will help us do this. We don’t have to just sit and wait for the spread of the poisonous process that Hitler also started by brainwashing youngsters.

INN: “What is your educational plan?”

R. Jacobs: “To become Dutch citizens, immigrants are compelled to study Dutch culture and the Dutch mentality. An integral part of this curriculum has to be educating for the acceptance of the multi culturalism which characterizes Holland. Dutch culture is an accepting, tolerant culture and Muslim immigrants must be told clearly that this is a basic condition for citizenship. The child who taunted me with shouts of “Jew” is an immigrant and the teacher said she learned it at home. Why not insist that her parents learn and accept that tolerance is part of law observant behavior in Holland, no matter what their private views are? Right now it’s not part of their language.

It’s not only Muslims, though. As for the native Dutch, groups must go to schools and teach about diversity, about Jewish history in Holland, about what Jews are and what happened to them in WWII. Dutch youth must hear survivors and meet Jews.

INN: “What does the future hold for Dutch Jewry in your eyes?”

R. Jacobs: “As the situation is today, the future for Dutch Jewry is moving to Israel. I see myself as a lifeguard, sent here by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, keeping Judaism alive while surrounded by a 70-80 percent assimilation rate. But in order to save those who will, G-d forbid, assimilate, we need lifeguards and lifeboats. And the more lifeguards and lifeboats, the more Jewish souls could be saved for Holland and for Israel.” (Picure: Rabbi Jacobs leads Dutch boy at Bar Mitzvah ceremony at Western Wall.) (IsraelNationalNews.com)

CNN's former Mideast Editor Octavia Nasr is not alone in loving this dead jihad terrorist. "Britain pulls Hezbollah blog post by its ambassador to Lebanon," from CNN, July 9:

London, England (CNN) -- Britain's foreign office yanked Friday a blog posted by its ambassador to Lebanon that mourned the death of an "admired" Shiite cleric once considered Hezbollah's spiritual leader.
Frances Guy wrote that she left the presence of Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died Sunday, feeling a better person.
"Lebanon is a lesser place the day after, but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon's shores," she said. "The world needs more men like him, willing to reach out across faiths." [...]

In a statement Friday, Britain's foreign office said the ambassador "expressed a personal view" on Fadlallah and did not reflect an official government position. The blog, it said, was taken down.

"While we welcomed his progressive views on women's rights and interfaith dialogue, we also had profound disagreements -- especially over his statements advocating attacks on Israel," the statement said....

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

The European Union demands that Israel to open all Gaza border crossings, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said Friday, ahead of her planned three-day visit to the region. "We stand ready to support the opening of the Gaza crossings for the traffic of goods to and from Gaza," Ashton said before departing for Israel.

Last month, Israel approved a loosening in its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, with the highlight of the new policy being the fact that only weapons or "dual-use" materials that could be used to manufacture weapons will be on the list. Any item not on the list will be permitted into Gaza. In its statement the PMO emphasized that the change would not counter Israel's policy "to defend it citizens against terror, rocket fire or any other hostile activities from Gaza."

"Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians," Netanyahu said. "All other goods will be allowed into Gaza."

Referring to the decision, Ashton said the EU "welcomed the announcements made by Israel following the flotilla incident and are now awaiting their implementation."

But that, apparently, is far from enough for the EU.

"The European Union has been calling for an urgent and fundamental change of policy regarding the closure of Gaza," Ashton continued.

Ashton is scheduled to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leadership - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as well as the Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair.

Ashton also reportedly plans to visit UNRWA projects sites in Gaza on Sunday, at least those that have not been burned down by Islamic extremists.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Two Spanish activists who were on board the aid flotilla raided by Israeli troops on May 31 on Friday sued Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Nine Turkish activists were killed in the attack.

Manuel Tapial and Laura Arau -- two of the three Spaniards who were on board the ships -- lodged a complaint against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, six members of his cabinet and a senior military officer at Spain's National Court.

Mr. Tapial said his aid association would send two Spanish--flagged ships to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's blockade....

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Christian Democrats are threatening to expel the politician who invited Dutch anti-Islam proponent, Geert Wilders, to speak in the German capital.

Old habits die hard. I guess the WWII Nazi-Muslim spirit of friendship, cooperation and mutual goals is never very far from the surface. In fairness, not all Germans feel this way, only the left wing Democrats.

There were demonstrations in London in March when the far-right Dutch lawmaker visited the House of Lords to screen his anti-Islam movie Fitna. Wilders’ Freedom Party won 16 per cent of votes in the Dutch general election in June.

Rene Stadtkewitz, a Christian Democratic deputy in the legislature of Berlin state, was unrepentant over his invitation to Wilders. He said they would meet October 2 to share views on how to fight political Islam. He gave no details of any public appearances.

Frank Henkel, caucus leader of the city Christian Democrat Union, said he would expel Stadtkewitz from the caucus if he did not call off the Wilders visit.

“I won’t cancel the invitation to Wilders. That would go against my fundamental political convictions,” Stadtkewitz responded.

Stadtkewitz resigned his CDU party membership in 2009 in protest at a fellow member who has built bridges with city Muslims, but remains a member of the CDU caucus in the state legislature.

He has campaigned against plans to build the newest mosque in the city. He has charged that the Merkel party is “too soft and too tolerant” towards “violence-prone, radical Muslims.” Earth Times

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Britain is in an uproar over comments in a Jewish newspaper by President Shimon Peres, who called British policies “pro-Arab” and “anti-Israel.” His remarks were contained in an interview conducted by Ben Gurion University Professor Benny Morris for Tablet, a year-old New York-based Jewish news website.

President Peres let down his diplomatic guard, perhaps not realizing that the British media would notice the interview, and stated that the growing Muslim population in Britain has contributed to the country’s being Israel’s ”next big problem.”

"There are several million Muslim voters, and for many Members of Parliament, that's the difference between getting elected and not getting elected," he said. "And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab—of course, not among all Englishmen—and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

"They abstained in the 1947 United Nations partition resolution ... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s ... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs." He added that Germany and France have relatively good relations with Israel.

Britain’s new Conservative party Prime Minister, David Cameron, got off on the wrong foot with Israel last week when he stated that Gaza was a ”prison camp.” President Peres did not refer to his remark.

James Clappison, Conservative Member of Parliament and vice chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, criticized the President’s statements, saying that "Peres has got this wrong.” While admitting that Israel often is understandably frustrated by some British media, Clappison added, “I don't recognize what he is saying about England."

Criticism also came from the Jewish community in Britain. Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain, who also is a writer and broadcaster, said, “I am surprised at Peres. It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided. Britain has supported both Israel and Arab causes at different periods over the last 50 years. There are elements of anti-Semitism but it is not endemic to British society.”

Support for President Peres came from the Christian Friends of Israel, whose director Jacob Vince told the London Telegraph that it was "difficult to see how many MPs would not be influenced by the number of Muslim voters in their constituencies. The question is how well they [MPs] understand those with whom they are seeking conciliation." ....

A new wave of anti-Semitism in France spread to the city of Marmande, where vandals desecrated a memorial to Jews deported by Nazis. The attack follows two recent attacks on attacks on kosher stores and Jewish graves.

As the rampage continues, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux expressed “horror and sadness” after the latest desecration. The mayor of Marmande pointed the finger at Holocaust deniers who smeared the words “lies,” “Zionism”, “interests” and the dollar sign “$” in red paint on the monument that bears the names of Nazi concentration camps.

Hortefeux said that the anti-Semites "clearly targeted the memory of the deportees and the Jewish community of France. I am more than ever determined to fight against all racism and all forms [of] extremism.”

Official statements denouncing the new wave have not stemmed it. Last week, the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) described attacks on kosher stores as a “new demonstration of anti-Semitic hatred.” Swastikas had been discovered at a dozen kosher stores in Paris and on the wall of a Jewish school and a nearby building.

Three weeks ago, vandals in eastern France smashed or overturned 27 gravestones at the Jewish cemetery of Wolfisheim, near Strasbourg.

More recently, anti-Semitic slogans and Nazi swastikas were discovered on the walls of the Etz Chaim synagogue in Melun, located in central France. In January, some 30 gravestones were vandalized, including 18 painted with swastikas and 13 overturned, and the German phrase “Juden Raus” (“Jews out”) was written on one of the tombstones.

Part of the increase was attributed to Israel's Operation Cast Lead campaign against the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, but demographers have also noted the rapid increase in the Muslim population in France. An estimated five to six million Muslims lived in France in 2003, according to the French Interior Ministry. The number had climbed to an estimated eight million, according to Odile Jacob's Intégrer l'Islam.

In 2008, there were some 490,000 Jews living in France, according to a survey by Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University.

A history teacher has been suspended in France for spending too much time teaching students about the Holocaust.

Catherine Pederzoli, 58, a secondary school teacher who is Jewish, was accused of teaching the subject with insufficient neutrality for both her time dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust and trips she organized to former Nazi death camps, Pederzoli’s attorney Christine Tadic told Agence France-Presse.

"If this teacher had been a Christian, no one would have accused her of brain-washing," Tadic said. "Isn't it the case that this teacher's fault is to have been Jewish?"

A report compiled by school officials last month alleged that Pederzoli took up too much time preparing students for the annual school trips to Poland and the Czech Republic and accuses her of "lacking distance, neutrality and secularism" and "brain-washing" in teaching the Holocaust, AFP reported.

Tadic told the AFP that her client organized the trips for 15 years with no complaints and was unfairly targeted by a new school management team that arrived in 2007.

Authorities suspect Pederzoli of inciting a protest staged by some of her students in December after the school reduced the number of destinations on the Holocaust field trips, the AFP reported.

Judges have two weeks to decide whether or not to grant Pederzoli a court injunction to annul the suspension.

Interviewed by Belgian Flemish public radio VRT on Thursday, Karel De Gucht, European Commissioner for Trade, was asked about the chances for peace in the Middle East now that direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians restarted in Washington yesterday.

De Gucht answered with a tirade about the power of the ‘Jewish Lobby’ in the U.S. and appeared to indicate that Jews are irrational when it comes to the Israel and the Middle East conflict.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) called the remarks by De Gucht outrageous and called for an apology and a full retraction.

EJC President Dr. Moshe Kantor was incensed by De Gucht’s anti-Semitic remarks. “What sort of environment allows such remarks to be made openly by a senior politician?” Kantor said. “This is part of a dangerous trend of incitement against Jews and Israel in Europe that needs to be stamped out immediately.”

“Once again we hear outrageous anti-Semitism from a senior European official,” Kantor said. “The libel of Jewish power is apparently acceptable at the highest levels of the European Union. This should worry everyone who seeks a more tolerant Europe.”

De Gucht, one of the most senior officials in the European Union, is a former Belgian Foreign Minister. These latest remarks are especially troubling as statistics on anti-Semitic attacks in Europe have reached new heights.

Kantor said that these remarks are part of a new wave of new anti-Semitism growing in Europe which holds distorted views on Israel as the Jewish State. “It has somehow become acceptable to attack Jews through Israel, even at the highest levels” Kantor continued. “The old anti-Semitic libels of the all-powerful Jewish cabals, the recalcitrant Jew and the irrational Jews only caring for their own, are remade to fit 21st century hostility to the Jewish State.”

The EJC is calling for an immediate retraction and apology from De Gucht. “It is of great concern that a high-level politician in Europe holding such problematic and intolerant views,” Kantor said. “This is even more galling as Mr. De Gucht thought that these remarks were acceptable for public consumption.

The EU Commissioner's remarks follow the uproar after recent comments by Deutsche Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarazzin, who said that “all Jews share a certain gene.”

The Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, voted unanimously Thursday to dismiss Sarrazin. The board will ask German President Christian Wulff to terminate Sarrazin's contract. Sarrazin made headlines recently for his comments on both Muslim immigrants and Jews.

In fact, the remark on Jews is not without basis, and not necessarily anti-Semitic, although the intent and context of Mr. Sarrazin's remark seem to make it so. Orthodox Jewish researcher Professor Karl Skorecki and Dr. Doron Hammer, among others, in an article published recently in Nature magazine, have shown the existence of a Jewish genome uniting Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews. Genetic reasearchers have shown that Cohanim (Jews of the priestly line) have a common genetic characteristic.

Sarrazin also said that Muslim immigrants to Europe would not integrate into European society.

He has written a book arguing that ongoing Muslim immigration will be detrimental to Germany's economy and culture, due to high Muslim fertility rates combined with what he says is a Muslim refusal – or inability – to integrate into German society. He has previously criticized Muslim immigrants as a drain on Germany's welfare system.

His remarks were condemned by European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others.

Sarrazin has argued in his defense that his comments were taken out of context. In addition, he has the right to freedom of speech, he stated.

He was to have remained on the Bundesbank board until 2014. He is expected to appeal the bank's decision regarding his dismissal.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

The official Vatican newspaper slammed Italy’s prime minister for a joke that played on Jewish stereotypes and made fun of the Holocaust. The newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said in an editorial published Sunday that Silvio Berlusconi's joke was “offensive” and “deplorable."

Berlusconi was filmed telling the “Jewish joke” to well-wishers Oct. 2; the video clip was posted online by the anti-Berlusconi newspaper La Repubblica. In the clip the prime minister recounts how a Jew charged another Jew about $4,000 a day for hiding him during World War II. The punchline of the joke states, “The Jew says, the question now is whether we should tell him Hitler is dead and the war is over.”

In its editorial the L’Osservatore Romano said, “The head of the government’s jokes appear more deplorable” and “offend indiscriminately the feeling of the faithful and the sacred memory of the six million victims” of the Holocaust.